5 Benefits of Adding a Birdbath to Your Garden

get healthy living updates

Adding a simple, shallow birdbath to your garden can have multiple benefits—for you, for the birds and for your garden! Here are five things a garden birdbath will accomplish in your flower or veggie garden. It will:

1. Attract more birds (of course), which will help aerate the surrounding soil

2. Attract birds that will eat bugs, thus helping with garden pest control

3. Attract wasps, which are key predators of pests (such as cabbage worms) that love to eat your garden crops

4. Attract beneficial insects that help with crop pollination

5. Teach you more about the natural, wonderful, quirky habits of all kinds of birds

A few tips to keep in mind are that you don’t need anything fancy, birds can benefit from a birdbath in all seasons (not just summer), and you should prune plants surrounding the fixture so birds can look out (which they’ll naturally want to do as they keep an eye out for predators).

have you shared this story yet?

go ahead, give it a little love

share story:

Shelley Stonebrook is an Associate Editor at Mother Earth News—North America’s most popular magazine about sustainable, self-reliant living—where she works on exciting projects such as Organic Gardening content and the Vegetable Garden Planner. Shelley is particularly interested in organic gardening, small-scale, local food production, waste reduction, food preservation and cooking. In her spare time, she posts in her personal blog, The Rowdy Radish.

i understand the benefits to wildlife but my favorite reason is to watch the birds, squirrels and chipmunks drink from them. don't forget it's just as important to have water available in the winter time.

we also have a 3-tier water fountain. when it's really hot, a bird will plop down in the middle of the top tier and sit there with the water bubbling up underneath it. it's hilarious.